UB spinoff is a pioneer in digitizing resources for teachers worldwide

UB spinoff is a pioneer in digitizing resources for teachers worldwide

Employees including SQL developer Maria Halt (center) enjoy a kitchen with a six-burner stove, one benefit of a recent expansion of the company's Buffalo headquarters. "We’re creative people, so the architecture matters a lot — we wanted to be in a space that inspired inventive thinking," says CEO Donald Jacobs.

Now in its 10th year, PLS 3rd Learning employs about 40 people in downtown Buffalo

BUFFALO, N.Y. — In 2007, Don Jacobs, Michael Horning Jr.
and Robert Daunce left their jobs at the University at Buffalo to
embark on a new journey: founding a startup to digitize K-12
education, enabling teachers from different school districts to
share curriculum plans online.

Nearly 10 years later, their company, PLS 3rd Learning, is
thriving.

The firm employs about 60 full-time staff members, with about 40
working at its newly renovated headquarters on Main Street in
downtown Buffalo.

Clients include about 100 school districts in New York State,
over 800 in Texas, and the Pennsylvania Department of Education,
Jacobs says. The company also works internationally, with one
project in Turkey providing curriculum resources in English and
Turkish to teachers across the country.

Discovery Education, created by the Discovery Channel, engages
the firm in another capacity: building and delivering online
professional development courses for teachers. Colleges and
universities nationwide also hire the company to perform this
service.

Digitizing resources, inspiring teachers

CEO Donald Jacobs of PLS 3rd Learning, a UB spinoff
company.

PLS 3rd Learning has its roots in technology developed at
UB.

Before making the jump into entrepreneurship, Jacobs, CEO of PLS
3rd Learning, served as director of the Center for Applied
Technologies in Education, part of UB’s Graduate School of
Education, from 1999 to 2007.

In the mid-2000s, he and colleagues designed a web platform
called NYLearns that enabled K-12 teachers statewide to access
curriculum plans for every grade level. Using the portal, a
seventh-grade science teacher in Western New York could view a
listing of concepts students should know by the end of the school
year, along with peer-reviewed plans uploaded by other New York
State teachers for teaching those ideas.

“If you Google how to teach a student the circumference of
a circle, you will come up with hundreds of thousands of results,
but the value of that content is zero without context,”
Jacobs says. “What we do is provide context: Using our
platform, you can find resources for teaching students at a
specific grade level in a way that meets state standards. If you
have a student who learns better through kinesthetic learning,
which is very tactile, you can find resources for that.”

Annual sales of $10 million

With encouragement from UB’s Technology Transfer team,
Jacobs left the university in 2007 to commercialize the
curriculum-sharing platform.

His startup began as a subsidiary of another firm —
Performance Learning Systems (PLS) — before the two merged in
2012 to become PLS 3rd Learning with Jacobs as CEO. Horning is
executive vice president and Daunce is chief information
officer.

As the partners’ company approaches its 10th anniversary,
the UB spinoff is posting sales of about $10 million this year. The
company licenses its curriculum-sharing technology from UB, which
receives royalties in return.

“I feel a deep connection to UB,” Jacobs says.
“The Technology Transfer operation there is impressive. I can
say for a fact that I wouldn’t be doing this if it
wasn’t for the support and guidance they offered from the
very start.”

Teachers who use the curriculum platform say it has inspired the
way they teach.

“If you’re an Advanced Placement teacher in rural
Texas, without communication technologies, you’re working in
isolation,” Jacobs says. “But once you are a part of
this network where you can share what you’re doing and see
other people’s resources, it opens up all kinds of
opportunities you can provide for your kids.”

Mary Kolodziejczak, an instructional math coach and math
coordinator with the Orchard Park Central School District, says PLS
3rd Learning enables her to access a plethora of useful tools: She
uses NYLearns not only to access standards-based resources to teach
mathematics, but also leverages an assessment tool within the
portal to build tests whose questions mirror previous state
exams.

“Whether you’re looking at it on a daily basis
looking for resources or using it for long-term
curriculum-planning, it has everything you possibly could
want,” Kolodziejczak says. “They don’t just
choose any type of resource. They look for top teaching
resources.”

She adds that the customer service has been first-rate: “I
have never worked with a company that is so responsive to the needs
of the district. Any time I have had a question or suggestion, Bob
Hartz, our main contact with the company, is right there to address
my questions.”

Jacobs, a Niagara Falls native, says growing his business has
been gratifying in part because of PLS 3rd Learning’s
contributions to Buffalo.

“I’m a Western New York guy,” he says.
“A company like ours could go anywhere, but we’re
committed to this area. The 40 jobs we have here in Buffalo are all
well-paying — we have web developers and highly credentialed
educators on our staff.”

A few years ago, the company partnered with a local developer to
buy and renovate its headquarters at 678 Main St., an abandoned
building that now has polished wooden floors, open ceilings and
quirky office spaces with huge windows that let in light.

In 2015, the firm expanded next door, completing a renovation
that included the addition of a kitchen with a six-burner stove
where employees cook breakfast or shared dinners.

“We’re creative people, so the architecture matters
a lot — we wanted to be in a space that inspired inventive
thinking,” says Jacobs, whose desk consists of a treadmill
attached to a simple platform that holds his computer.

PLS 3rd Learning also supports other local businesses. The
company purchases food for events from downtown restaurants, office
supplies from a regional vendor and even had most of its furniture
made locally at furniture factory in Chaffee, New York.

Jacobs says that as the company continues to grow, Western New
York will continue to be a priority: “We have a deep
connection to this region, and we’re very proud of what
we’re accomplishing here.”